January 18, 2015

Check out this GIANT Flip-Dot Display that is certainly not coming to a store near you. The ooVoo isn’t selling displays, rather they wanted something in their booth to set them apart from the other high pixel count displays. Sometimes going mono color and low res pays off! The resolution is only 588×126 but when you consider that these are 74,088 mechanical pixels that make up the display that is pretty amazing.

“Each module has a built-in controller which are commanded via serial. To gang 189 of them into a single display, [Pat] sourced some serial to Ethernet hardware from Grid Connect. These adapters report back to a single computer via 64 Ethernet cables. That box plays back a video file, adapting it on the fly using Adobe Air to send packets to the IP addresses of the Ethernet controllers.

All of this is supplied by a trio of 56A, 24V power supplies. At a refresh rate of 30fps, when flipping all the dots at once this is a max current draw of 189 panels * 0.680 Amps = 128.52A @ 24VDC (Same power as 28 Amps @ 110VAC = 3085W).”